Seasons Girls
A group of four young women who are granted the powers of the seasons. They were created somewhere around mid September of 2015 (exact date and thread lost due to archive crash). Two years were spent arguing over their civilian names. TWO. YEARS. Let that sink in. Becoming a Seasons Girl An old pagan god supplies the powers of the seasons making four women who meet the qualifications into the heralds of the seasons. The criteria consists of: :1. Human and female :2. Was born on the corresponding solstices/equinoxes (spring equinox, summer solstice, fall equinox, winter solstice) :3. Has lived on the British islands for some length of time :4. Preforms the corresponding season ritual during their corresponding season. Only one woman can hold each elemental gift at any given time and it usually stays with them until death before the position opens up again. They may however elect to pass it along to a successor who meets all the conditions if they feel they can no longer fulfill their duty. If any of the positions are left vacant for any longer than a year, then events will conspire (under the guise of coincidence) to guide a new herald to the vacant role. The previous generation of the Seasons Girls worked closely with the Queen's Queers, but were killed when the magical inversion made their weapons explode (each generation had been storing magic in their non-magical weapons to create a reserve supply due to magic being in decline). Current Seasons Girls The current generation are mostly ignorant to why these positions exist in the first place, but accepted the power for their own various reasons. They like to think of themselves as Magical Girls as they combat the chaotic magical forces now unleashed upon their homeland. All four of them have transformation into their customs that cause damage to their surroundings and get some level of super human durability and elemental resistances. *'Spring' a.k.a. Lily - She sports a flowery look and a spunky attitude, also somewhat short. She's quick to get into trouble, suspicious of everything, and not very impressed with Britainment's operations. She loves all the attention being a "magical girl" gets her. Lily's family on her mother's side has passed down the traditional rites of the Seasons as a sort of family legend, unwittingly guiding her to become the first of the current generation to perform the ritual and take her place as one of the season's heralds. She's the most knowledgeable and technically competent of the group, and wants to keep the seasons free from Britainment's direct control, but still does the paperwork to enjoy the perks the organization gives. She has the power to make plants grow rapidly and control them, so enemies get tangled in vines. *'Summer' a.k.a. Daisy - She's very tall and her seasons outfit gives her a set of horns. She likes cooking (meat) and eating (meat) and loves cute things. She loves being a "magical girl" since it puts her into proximity with magical things from fairy tales, even if she does often have to rough them up. She was led through the ritual by a spirit guide posing as a wild boar she was hunting. She's the most emotionally open of the group and naturally in-tune with spirits. After she became a herald, Spring found her and they worked together separately from Britainment for about a month. She has the power to create fire and increase the air temperature. *'Autumn' a.k.a. Marigold - She has sticks in her hair like horns. She's the most serious of the four and the only one with anything resembling combat training since her father is a Gurkha who trained her to use a Kukri. She's very good at throwing knives. She was the first of the seasons directly put into position by Britainment, realizing in the aftermath of the Inversion event that they needed to get a handle on them. She was chosen because of her public service record (she volunteers and such) leading Britainment to believe they could trust her to be loyal and cooperative, rather than because they felt that she'd have any special affinity for being a herald. The magic does not come easy to her, and Lily doesn't respect her being considered the leader by Marian. Lily likes to make fun of her, and Britainment by extension, by referring to the fact they registered Marigold as being Summer and Daisy as being Fall in their first official record of the group. She has the power to create gusts of winds which makes anything she throws into it become like a bladed weapon she can control. Finer materials like sand can take on the shape of animals and blind enemies. *'Winter' a.k.a. Clara - She has round glasses and usually wears a hood or some other attire that looks somewhat religious. Despite her choice of dress, she almost always has a dirty slash (male on male) magazine on her. She comes from old OLD money with her family having an ancestral castle. Her ancestral home had been overrun by powerful magic in the backlash of the inversion event, and her family pulled strings to get Britainment to clear it out in exchange for having Clara become a herald. Her bloodline has a longstanding history of magic practitioners and she has a lot of talent for it, but she doesn't really take the seasons job seriously. She's a bit haughty and sees most people as a source of entertainment before seeing them as peers. She has the power to freeze anything, and not just in ice, but seemingly in time for things (like ghosts and fire) that cannot be encased in ice. Enemies As "magical girls" they fight all manner of magical monsters and spirits that threaten the British Islands. These entities were mostly awoken or created by the magical inversion event revitalizing/recharging old spells and charms and corrupting them into doing the opposite of what they were meant to do. Some specific threats are: *'Malise Rathmore', a witch - When the Inversion Event happened, magic within a certain range of England was reversed or broken up into raw magic. Malise had protective runes tattooed into her body which were inverted and became a painful curse. The season heralds can be any girl that was born on the solstice or equinox of the appropriate season, and Malise happened to have been born on the Summer Solstice. She wanted to become the summer herald because the magic it grants would be able to break the curse, but Daisy ended up in the job first. If Daisy were to die, she could take the position as herald, so she's trying to off her. *'The Red Huntstman' - The same ancient pagan tribes that created the season herald pacts used similar rituals to channel other kinds of spirits into their warriors and holy people. The huntsman was one such warrior who was bound to a spirit of bloodshed, which was meant to give him strength and power for each successful hunt. As might be obvious in retrospect, rather than ritual bloodshed being a byproduct of hunting, it became his focus. The more blood he shed, the more dangerous he became, so he was sealed in a tree. He was freed in the Inversion Event and is carving through Europe. *'The self-proclaimed prophet' - He believes that everything he does is in service to bringing about the new age of magic, which mostly leads to him spreading around enchantments like they were candy. Animating stone statues, freeing ancient dragons, creating magic swords, if there's a nonsensical but "magical" situation, there's a decent chance he was involved. *'The stone dragon' - A dragon that had been buried in a cave-in. It petrified across the ages and its body became one with the mountain. It was released by the prophet, but wasn't returned to its original form, so it's a dragon that's largely stuck on the ground, which is a big source of frustration for it. *'The Rogue Fae' - Despite the Inversion Event, the majority of the Fae decided to remain in the Fae Kingdom rather than get back into the swing of things on Earth. This one, however, decided that it was about damn time and wants to set up her own little kingdom. She lures people in and keeps them in a stupor, subjecting them to powerful hallucinations to fuel the production of dreamstuff, the fundamental material of Fae magic. *'The Dryad Queen' - No one knows much about her or her intentions. She might be something of a magic traditionalist. *'The Redcap' - An imp-like being, a riddle master who carries a sharp blade, he stabs whoever answers his riddles correctly. *Darkheart Orin - Orin is old. Very, very old, when you get right down to it. Orin is so old, in fact, that he remembers back before this whole "technology" thing really kicked off and wizards might have well been gods and kings. Britainment wants to mitigate the changes to society that the magical resurgence is causing, but Orin sees it as a new beginning. He thinks the prophet is a moron with simple ideas, the fae is living in a fantastic delusion, and the dryad queen is stuck in the past. He doesn't want to see a return to ancient times and old magic, he wants to see where the magic of the future can take humanity. The girls have standing orders not to fight this guy, they can only counter him indirectly. But they are by no means limited to fighting just these guys. There's magical threats popping up out of the woodwork all over. Gallery 1443074763445.png|The first pass at trying to design them 1444085014452.jpg|Second pass at trying to design them 1446663296849.jpg|Fall/Autumn 1445968872522.jpg|More early design concepts with other characters 1478360390792.jpg|Post-battle victory celebration, Summer and Fall are mislabeled 1478984037859.jpg|More concept sketches, Spring is shorter here than her final design 1479620718718.jpg|Being scouted for Britainment 1500317710273.jpg|Perks of Britainment 1509851895092.jpg|Spring making fun of Autumn 1512896782311.jpg|Meeting The Bump 1482021350582.png|The cursed witch they fight sometimes 1516166918537.png|Cursed witch Category:Characters Category:Female Category:Groups Category:Hero